


Hidden Talents

by Lindenharp



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 18:19:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6868225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindenharp/pseuds/Lindenharp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DI Robert Lewis wasn't sure if he'd learn much at the Oxfordshire police conference. He certainly didn't expect to learn something startling about his sergeant's past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden Talents

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally intended for the Inspector Lewis Summer Challenge. See the end note for the prompt I used. Many thanks are due to Wendymr for kind encouragement and ruthless beta-reading.

Robbie studies the room with dismay. It's crowded with far too many coppers. _Who's minding the shop?_ A banner at the front proclaims '2011 Annual Oxfordshire Intra-Force Conference: Learning From One Another'.

"Lewis..."

Robbie turns around at the sound of his name. "Broderick. Heard you were back. Didn't know you'd be here today."  He forces himself to speak with cool courtesy. It's been, what? Ten years? People can change.

George Broderick waves his hand in a circle. "What better place to meet my new colleagues, and catch up with old friends?"  He flashes his teeth in a smile as genuine as a three-pound note. "But I knew that _you_ would be here.  Saw your name on the programme, didn't I?" Broderick's voice turns mock-professorial. "'Observations on Community Policing in the British Virgin Islands.'" he snorts. "Typical of you. I heard what happened—you crawled into a bottle, and instead of making you retire, your old matey CS Strange sent you on a bloody beach holiday."

 _Tosser. Some people change, and some never will._  Ten years ago, Robbie would have snapped back; would have defended himself, defended Strange. Now, he knows it's useless. More than that—it's exactly what Broderick wants. He can't be arsed to pretend to be friendly, but he's got no reason to stir up more trouble, either. So he says something vague about getting some coffee to keep him awake through the presentations, and heads for the refreshment table.

There's a long queue of coppers waiting for coffee and tea, but Robbie doesn't join them, because there's his bagman standing to the side, a faint smile on his lips and a go-cup of coffee in each hand. "Who was that?"

"George Broderick. He's the new DI over to Milton Keynes."

"You know him?" It's not quite a question, more of an invitation to provide information if he wants.

He _doesn'_ t bloody want, but if Broderick is going to be around, best that Hathaway understands the situation. "Let's go outside before the circus begins, yeah? You can have a fag and I'll tell you about what happened."

There's really not much to tell. "Broderick transferred in from Swindon ten years ago—not long after Morse died. I'd just made DI, and Broderick had maybe a year or two on me." Robbie sighs. "It was a hard time on the Force. A lot of politics and controversy going on. Budget cuts and power plays and whatnot. Most of it was taking place in closed rooms far away from me, thank God, but the aftereffects were felt by everyone." Hathaway is wearing his listening face: focused, intent.  Robbie continues, "There were some reassignments and changes in the duty rota, and Broderick felt hard done by.  Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't, but he blamed me. Said I'd asked Strange to do it."

"That's absurd." Hathaway's indignation warms Robbie. "You would never—"

"More to the point, Strange would never do it." _There were some that reckoned he favoured me because of his friendship with Morse, but that wasn't his style._ "Long story short: Broderick transferred to Leicester, then Reading. Now he's back in Oxford, and apparently still hates my guts." He shrugs. "At least he's not in CID. With him at Milton Keynes, I'm not likely to see much of him."

Whatever reply Hathaway was about to make is interrupted by the sound of CS Innocent's amplified voice inviting (commanding) the attendees to take their seats.  After a brief welcome message, she turns the podium over to the first presenter, DI Hal Armstrong. His ten-minute talk on rough sleepers is concise, practical, and more interesting than Robbie expected. Anderson's talk sets the pattern for the ones that follow: brief, focused, and based on personal experience.

As the morning wears on, Robbie taps his feet soundlessly on the carpeted floor beneath the table. His right hand dips in and out of his jacket pocket, touching a folded piece of A4 paper.  His will be the first talk after the mid-morning break. It's not that he's worried, exactly. How many bloody speeches has Innocent made him give to community groups? Only this is to be delivered to nearly half of the Force. And it's more personal. He can't talk about the BVI without remembering why he was sent there. Robbie touches the paper again. He'll be fine. Not as though he has to ad lib it, right?

DS Melissa Hurst finishes her presentation on at-risk teenage girls, and Innocent announces a fifteen-minute break. Hathaway scuttles off to join his fellow addicts in the car park while Robbie heads for the loo. It's surprisingly crowded, and a queue of a dozen male coppers extends from the door into the hallway.  Out of the corner of his eye he can see Broderick join the queue three places behind him. Robbie pulls the paper out of his jacket pocket and busies himself by reading his speech. Scanning it for mistakes, he tells himself, as if any mistake could have eluded Hathaway's keen gaze. He's on his third re-reading when he realises that the door to the gents' is directly in front of him. Hastily, he re-folds the paper and shoves it back into his pocket.  

Having taken care of one bodily need, he heads for the refreshment table to tend another. More coffee. He'll get two, he decides, as James is probably still outside, puffing like a chimney. Halfway across the room, he dips his hand into his right jacket pocket, and freezes when his hand encounters only the slick fabric of the lining. _Don't panic. You were distracted and put it somewhere else._ But the left jacket pocket contains only a crumpled handkerchief and two lint-covered cough lozenges.

He checks every pocket in his clothing, including the rear pockets of his trousers, which he never uses. Everything else is where it ought to be: mobile, wallet, warrant card, spare change, a receipt from the dry cleaners, a couple of plastic evidence bags, notebook and biro... His heart skips a beat when his searching fingers touch paper in the breast pocket of his jacket, but it's only an old shopping list. Around him, the movements of the crowd begin to shift, like a changing tide. The break is nearly over.

Could he have dropped it outside the loo? Robbie retraces his steps, scanning the floor as he goes. Nothing. He can see at a glance that there's nothing in the hallway; white paper would stand out like a spotlight on the maroon carpet.  In the loo, he checks the stalls and even pulls out an evidence bag to cover his hand so he can search the rubbish bin. Nothing. _Bloody hell!_ As he hurries back to the conference room, his mind is sorting through possibilities. Could be that someone who knows him found the paper and is looking for him. He scans the room, but no one seems to be looking for him—except for George still-a-tosser-after-all-these-years Broderick, who is striding towards him.

"Wanted to tell you how much I'm looking forward to your talk," Broderick says, and smirks. "Can't wait to hear about those 'white beaches and dark alleyways.'"

It takes a moment for it sink in. Those words are a direct quote from the opening lines of his talk. Robbie stares at Broderick. _What is he playing at?_

Broderick's hand goes into his own jacket pocket, and pulls out the corner of a piece of paper, then pushes it down out of sight. "If you ask nicely..."

Disbelief is followed by fury, then by wariness. It'd be just like Broderick to make him beg, then refuse to hand over the paper. He may have found and read Robbie's speech, but that doesn't mean he's still got the paper on him. That glimpse of white could be anything. "Bit old for schoolboy pranks, aren't you?" Robbie says with all the calm he can muster. He holds out his hand. "Give it here."

Broderick chuckles. "I've no idea what you mean, DI Lewis." He makes a show of looking at his watch. "Oops! I'd best get back to my seat. It's nearly showtime."

Feeling numb, Robbie glances down at his own watch. Five minutes left. Time for Plan B, if only he can figure out what the hell that is. The one thing he's sure of is that he'd rather make a fool of himself in front of the whole world than speak a single soft word to George Broderick. Maybe Hathaway can help him write up a quick outline? If he's got a list of the main points, perhaps he won't stumble too badly.

As if summoned by the very thought of his name, Hathaway appears at Robbie's side. "Sir? What's wrong?"

Robbie pulls him to a quiet corner, and quickly explains the problem. He's about to ask Hathaway to write him an outline when his bagman asks, "Which pocket?"

He blinks. "What?" How can that possibly matter? Hathaway repeats the question, a note of urgency in his voice. "The left. Left jacket pocket," he stammers, then watches in bewilderment as his bagman strides away, a man with a mission. _What do you think you're doing?_ For one terrifying minute he sees Hathaway approach Innocent, but the sergeant merely gives her a respectful nod as he passes. He slows as he gets nearer to Broderick. His posture relaxes. Hathaway greets several colleagues with a nod and a smile. He even pauses to say something to DS Hurst, who looks startled, but smiles. Broderick is talking with a man that Robbie doesn't recognise. One of the officers from Milton Keynes? Neither man looks away from their convo as Hathaway walks by.

It's over in a second, maybe less. Even though Robbie has his eyes fixed on Hathaway, he almost misses the moment in which the sergeant's slim hand dips into Broderick's pocket. There's a flash of white, and then it vanishes. Hathaway himself vanishes, only to reappear a few moments later, his blond head moving through a cluster of uniformed officers like a swimmer bobbing between waves. Broderick is still blathering to his friend, oblivious. _Thank God._ If Hathaway had been caught...

He's still alternating between fear and amazement when Hathaway returns and hands him a piece of paper. Even before he opens it and sees the familiar words, Robbie knows it's the right one. He recognises the angle of the uneven folds and the coffee stain on the lower right corner. "James, thank you... but how—"

The crease in Hathaway's forehead deepens, and his teeth graze his lower lip. "Not here, sir. Later. I promise." And there's no time to say anything else, because Innocent is at the podium again, silencing the crowd and announcing the next speaker: Detective Inspector Robert Lewis.

He's only dimly aware of the audience at first, so focused is he on reading correctly. In the back of his head, Hathaway's remembered voice is coaching him: _"Slow down, sir. It's not a race. Pause there. Breathe."_ There's laughter following the one joke that Hathaway had permitted him to keep in the speech, so a few lines later he dares a glance at the audience. No one's fallen asleep. Most of them seem to be listening; a few are nodding in agreement or interest, and one young constable is taking notes. _Unless he's writing a shopping list..._

And then he's done. The applause is loud and genuine. As he makes his way back to his seat, he's aware of only two faces in the crowd: the proud smile of DS James Hathaway, and the dark glower of DI George Broderick.

 

* * *

 

"How did you do it, man?" Having both opted out of the dubious lunch buffet provided by the conference centre, they're sitting on a comfortable bench in the sunshine with sandwiches from a nearby cafe. "Don't tell me they teach sleight-of-hand at Cambridge or the seminary. Can you pull a rabbit out of a hat? Me Uncle Charlie used to pull a shilling out of my ear. Now, _that_ would be a handy trick."

"I've never studied legerdemain." James says in a voice flatter than he intended.

Lewis sobers immediately. "Forget it. I was just curious. No need to talk about it if you'd rather not."

James's long silence is punctuated with a sigh. "No, you ought to know." _I_ want _you to know._ He stares down at the pavement, then abruptly raises his head and meets his governor's gaze. "You know where I went to school?" He receives a nod in reply. "You've probably guessed that I attended on a scholarship. It covered all of my fees, including those for activities such as school trips. The summer I turned 13, I found out that there would be a school trip to Paris in the Autumn Term. The scholarship paid the trip, but there were some 'optional activities' that were not included. One of them was a concert—" He lets out a soft, rueful laugh. "I would have sold my soul to attend it, if I could have found a buyer."

"It's a hard age," Lewis agrees. "Everything feels urgent, like your life depends on it." He smiles reminiscently, and for one terrible moment James is afraid that Lewis is going to wax parental. "I remember things I wanted when I was a lad. Didn't get much pocket money, and what I earned from from a paper round wasn't enough."

James got pocket money from his father. It was generous, by his standards, but the salary of an estate manager didn't quite match up to the income of an investment banker, an MP, or the CEO of a petroleum drilling corporation. "After considering my options, I decided to go to London to make my fortune."

"What, like Dick Whittington?" Lewis blurts out.

"Exactly like Dick Whittington," James replies, and he can't quite suppress a sardonic curl of his upper lip. "Except for the bit about becoming Lord Mayor. And I didn't bring a cat with me—I brought my guitar instead. I was going to set up as a busker and let the adoring public fill my guitar case with cash."

"If my—if _I_ had done a daft thing like that, my parents would've tracked me down and I wouldn't have been able to sit comfortably for a week." It's as close as Lewis will come to asking.

"I had a cunning plan," James explains. "The McEwans had invited me to visit for the summer. The week before I was supposed to go, I invented an excuse about having to stay home and help my father."

_It wouldn't have worked—shouldn't have worked—except for a serendipitous combination of circumstances. Mum and Nell had gone up to Thetford to visit Aunt Judy, who'd been diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Dad might have preferred him to stay home and work, except that he'd just started at Fairmount, and he wanted to make a good impression on his new employer. Sir Francis Tanner was a micromanaging nouveau riche twat who preferred not to see his estate manager's giraffe of a son cluttering up his immaculate landscape._

He tells the story simply, leaving out as many of the details as he can. Lewis doesn't need to know how he hitchhiked to London, or the arrangements he made for a place to sleep. "The first few days were instructional."

_James learned which times and places were most likely to produce a generous—or at least amiable—-audience. Londoners rushing to and from work became very different creatures when enjoying baguettes on a park bench at noon._

_The lesson that hit hardest was discovering that the only thing more ravenous than a teenage boy was London itself. It consumed time, energy, and good intentions. Worst of all, it devoured money. Far too many of the coins that landed in his guitar case went to necessities like food and lodging and Tube fare. Sleeping rough was too risky (if the street criminals didn't get him, the police would), walking from one busking spot to another was too time-consuming, and he couldn't eat cheaper unless he fought the Trafalgar Square pigeons for breadcrumbs. He_ needed _to make more money._

"And then I met Kat. She was seventeen."

"An alluring older woman?" Lewis teases.

"Oh, yes." From her Doc Marten boots to her pinned-up curls, she'd been the epitome of 90's teenage style. "She introduced herself as Alley Kat." James sees Lewis's smile fade. It's not difficult to imagine the assumption that an experienced copper would make, especially one who used to work vice. "No, she wasn't a prostitute. She was—well, let me tell this in order."

_James was vaguely aware of a girl moving through the crowd as he played the last piece in the set (a particularly tricky Bach partita). She was nowhere in sight as his audience dispersed, but reappeared a few moments later, and dropped a handful of change into his guitar case. He stammered out his thanks, and she grinned at him. "See you around, kid."_

_He saw her again the next day. This time, she was accompanied by a boy her own age in a faded Sex Pistols t-shirt who stared at James with cool, appraising eyes. He introduced himself as Jack Dawkins, though he smirked as he said it. James wondered if it was his real name or if he'd chosen an alias from Dickens._

_"What do you think?" Kat asked, gesturing at James with a hand tipped with iridescent blue nails._

_Jack scratched the patch of fuzz on his knobby chin. "I don't know anything about the Beethoven crap, but the Great British Public seems to like him." He shrugged. "Why not?"_

_The conversation meant nothing to James. Kat was clearly pleased. "That's brill!"_

_The fortnight that followed was surprisingly successful. At Kat's suggestion, he moved to another pitch where he'd attract a posher crowd. “Toffs with deep pockets,” she said. The crowds did seem to include more well-dressed business people. City types, he guessed, though his new pitch was outside the boundaries of the City of London. "You can make music in the City," Kat had explained, "only you can't collect any money." She shook her head at the unfathomable ways of the Corporation of the City of London._

_The City types were moderately generous, but some of his largest tips came from young people, shabbily dressed, with no apparent connection to the world of finance. He thanked them as he thanked everyone. Some responded with a nod or mumbled word. Most turned and strode away as if they'd completed a chore._

_Kat often came over when he was packing up for the day. She'd smile, ask how he was doing, and tease him about his 'posh, boring music.' She called him 'Jimmy,' which somehow didn't annoy him as it did coming from anyone else. It was rather like having an older sister, he supposed._

_One Friday evening, James trudged towards the kebab shop where he usually had supper, trying to decide what he could afford to eat. The day's take had been smaller than usual. He stared down at the pavement, trying to convince himself that a doner kebab and a small portion of chips would be enough, when a familiar voice interrupted his thoughts. "Oi! Jimmy!"_

_He looked up to see Kat walking hand-in-hand with Jack. When she asked how his day had gone, he shrugged. "All right."_

_"Day's not over yet, innit?" Kat replied, and she gave Jack a look._

_The older boy reached into the pocket of his hoodie and removed a crumpled, grease-stained paper bag with the logo of a local chippy. Jack held it out towards James, who took it reluctantly. He didn't want Kat to think that he was so pitiful that he needed to accept leftover chips, like a dog eating table scraps. At the same time, he didn't want to offend Jack, who had a quick temper._

_James opened the bag and peered inside. Instead of the expected chips, he saw what at first glance looked like a small handful of paper serviettes. Then he saw the faces: George Stephenson, the Duke of Wellington, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Banknotes. Fivers. At the bottom of the bag, some coins clinked cheerfully. "What's this for?"_

_Kat looked puzzled; Jack, annoyed. He said slowly, as if explaining something to a dull-witted child, "It's your cut. Ned had to scarper, so he asked me to give it to you."_

_"Who's Ned?"_

_"The bloke that was working your pitch today, Jimmy," Kat said patiently._

_The penny dropped. All those generous teenagers had been using his music—-using him—-as a distraction for pickpocketing. And Kat thought that James knew, that he approved. He thrust the bag back at Jack. "I don't want it."_

Lewis winces. "Don't suppose that went over well."

"An understatement."

_Jack leaned forward. He was a few inches shorter than James, but stockier, and he held himself like someone accustomed to violence.  Kat was motionless. Her face had lost all its warmth. "Jimmy, you're not thinking of talking to the pigs, are you?" she asked softly. "Cos that would be a very bad idea." She placed one hand on Jack's upper arm, as if holding him back._

_"No!" James protested. "I wouldn't. I can't!" And he truly couldn't—not without being shipped home as soon as the police discovered his age._

_"If you don't want dosh, what_ do _you want?" Jack growled._

 _hat did he want? James's mind raced. In Jack's world, everyone wanted_ something _. If James refused to take anything, Jack and Kat would probably assume that he was feeling guilty about his involvement and might go to the police. What else could he request from a couple of pickpockets? Drugs, maybe? Ask for pot and quietly dispose of it later? No. The consequences if he was caught scared him more than the prospect of a beating from Jack. He'd certainly lose his scholarship and his place at St Anselm's. And he didn't want to think about what his father would do to 'teach him a lesson'... "Lessons!" he blurted out. "Teach me to do what you do."_

_"You want to learn to dip?" Jack exchanged glances with Kat. "What do you think, babe?"_

_"He's got good hands," she said._

_"Right." Jack jerked his chin at James. "Come along, then, Beethoven."_

_They took him to their squat: an abandoned house that was the worst place James had ever seen. It was dark, filthy, and reeking of rancid grease, urine, and marijuana mingled with incense. But he'd learned at home and at school to keep his feelings from showing, and that helped, until he nearly tripped over a ragged figure sprawled face-down in the hallway. "Is he... okay?" he stammered, too afraid of the reply to ask the real question: 'Is he alive?'_

_Kat glanced down at the motionless figure. "Looney Larry? He'll be all right after he sleeps it off. Step over him," she said, doing just that._

_They led him to a room in the rear of the house. Light trickled in through one of the windows which was not completely boarded up. "Right, then. Let's get started," Jack said briskly, sounding eerily like James's maths teacher._

"He showed me the basic moves," James tells Lewis. "Not very difficult, really."

Lewis snorts. "Not if you're a musician with 'good hands,' I reckon. What happened next?"

"The same thing that happens in music: practice, practice."

_Jack stuffed a battered leather wallet in the rear pocket of his jeans, and ordered James to snatch it. Over and over again. Whenever he decided that his student's touch was so clumsy that 'even a half-pissed mark' would have noticed it, he slapped James's hand. Hard. After a while, he handed the wallet to Kat, who placed it into a green vinyl handbag. She began with the bag hanging open, then shut the metal clasp once she judged James was ready to advance. She also punished clumsiness with slaps. Within fifteen minutes, James's right hand was pink and tingling._

"And then I got caught up in the challenge of it," he tells Lewis apologetically.

"Course you did," the other man replies with a chuckle.

_He was so focused on keeping his hand steady that he barely heard Kat saying his name. "Jimmy? That's enough." He gawped at her._

_"Lesson's over, Beethoven," Jack said. "We're square now, yeah? We don't owe you nothing."_

_And then he was stumbling out of the front door of the squat, blinking in the late afternoon sunlight. There were two young women standing on the pavement, smoking. As James stumbled down the front steps, they giggled. One blew a smoke ring in his direction; the other made loud kissing sounds. He walked faster, not sure of his direction, only of his need to get away._

"You were feeling guilty about the lesson. Did you reckon it was a sin?"

"Not a sin, per se, but a proximate occasion of sin."

His governor gazes at him with a familiar look of patient inquiry. _Let's have the translation, sergeant._

"Sorry. A circumstance which is likely to incite or entice one to sin."

"And did you have a sudden urge to head over to Madame Tussaud's and relieve a dozen gormless tourists of their wallets?"

"I did not."

_He had a sudden urge to vomit, only his stomach was empty. It had been quite a few hours since his hasty—and scanty—lunch._

"I headed back to the place I was staying and tried to calculate how much of the money I'd saved was actually mine."

"You would."

 

* * *

 

 _It was a dark night of the soul for James. He sat and stared at the small pile of banknotes. He hadn't known the money was stolen, but now that he_ did _know, he couldn't keep it without sharing in the sin. How much had he earned before Kat came along? Very little. How much had he earned honestly since then? No way to tell. He should probably give it all away, except for a few quid to see him home. No point in continuing this farce any longer. He tucked away the money and switched off his torch, then lay down on his sleeping bag. Sleep was a long time in coming._

_The next morning, James made his way to the nearest Catholic church.  There was no one in sight, except for a woman kneeling in prayer in one of the side chapels. Early Mass was over, and this wasn't an historic building likely to attract tourists. He found the charity boxes, as expected, in the rear of the narthex. One was simply marked 'For the Poor'. With a sigh, he removed the crumpled notes from his pocket, and began to stuff them into the narrow slot._

_"'God loves a cheerful giver,' it says in the Bible," a voice behind him drawled. "Still, I reckon that the poor aren't quite as fussy as the Lord."_

_James spun around. The voice was American, with an accent that he vaguely recognised as southern. The man belonging to the voice was in his seventies._

_"I can't help but wonder why you're shoving money into that charity box as if it had done you wrong."_

_James shrugged. He wasn't going to explain his situation to a random tourist._

_"Anyways, maybe you could help me," the American said. James tensed, prepared to run, but the man seemed not to notice. "Are you Catholic?"_

_There didn't seem to be any harm in answering_ that _question. "Yes..."_

_"You see, I promised my buddy Sal that if I ever got back to London, I'd light a candle for him here. He loved this city. Said it reminded him of Boston, his home town. It's been forty-seven years, but a promise is a promise."_

_James did the maths. 1944. "Your friend died in the war?"_

_"Yeah. Private Salvatore Russo. We lost him at Cherbourg, God rest him."_

_"I'm sorry," James said automatically. "You want to light a candle, sir?"_

_The man looked vaguely embarrassed. "Yes, but I'm a Baptist, and we don't... I just don't want to do it wrong."_

_"It's not difficult," James assured him. "Was your friend devoted to any particular saint? Or the Blessed Mother?"_

_The man looked even more uncomfortable. "I'm not sure. Does it have to be a saint?"_

_"No, you can light it at the main altar if you'd rather." James showed the American where the votive candles were. "You can say whatever prayer you'd like." He retreated to the charity box, and finished stuffing it with the last of his money._

_"Thank you." The American had evidently finished his prayers. "Much obliged." He gestured at the guitar case. "You a musician, son?" Before James could reply, he added, "Any chance that you play piano?"_

_"Yes, I do." He added, almost defiantly, "My mum taught me."_

_"Did she now?" The American smiled. "I wonder—but I'm getting this all bass-ackwards. I'm Bobby Oglesby." He paused. Reluctantly, James introduced himself—first name only. Oglesby explained that he had been stationed in the UK for two months before shipping off to Normandy. He and some of his old army mates were in London for a reunion and holiday._

_James nodded, still not sure what any of this had to do with him._

_Oglesby told him that they'd hired a function room in their hotel for a party that afternoon. "It's got a piano, and we were going to sing some of the old songs. Martha—Zeke Barnwell's wife—plays the piano, but her arthritis is acting up today." He had no idea how to find a pianist on short notice in a strange city, and the hotel staff had not been particularly helpful._

"So, he offered you a job?" Lewis asks.

"He did. A paying gig. If nothing else, I would have accepted for the sake of sharing their dinner."

 _For a hungry teenager who'd been on short rations for weeks, the simple meal was a feast. After dinner, Mrs Barnwell produced a binder of yellowed sheet music_ . _James had never heard of most of the songs, but compared to a Chopin etude, 'Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree' didn't present much of a challenge. Besides, the assembled Americans were too engrossed in the songs and in their memories to critique his playing._

"Happy ending, then? The Yanks paid you what you needed?"

"Very nearly. They paid me generously for three hours of my time, and it made up for what I'd lost. I was able to save up the rest after I got home, between pocket money and a loan from Will." He spreads his hands wide. "And there you have it. My picaresque adventures on the streets of London."

"Did you ever..." Lewis hesitates.

"Use my new-found skills?" James feels the heat rising in his cheeks. "A few times, at school, just to see if I could. I never kept anything. Some of the more annoying boys in my year... mislaid certain personal items, and later found them in unexpected places." He pauses, studying his governor's face. Lewis huffs out a soft laugh, and James adds, "Oh, and once at university. There was a thoroughly inebriated idiot at the pub who was about to drive off with his girlfriend. She was nervous, he was belligerent, and it seemed that the best solution was for the idiot to 'lose' his car keys. I believe the publican found them in the loo later that evening, after the charming couple had already taken a taxi home."

"I suppose that was a reasonable decision—then," Lewis concedes. "But now—today—James, you can't do that again."

He manages to keep his voice even. "Sir, I would never do anything that might compromise a case, or—"

"Of course you wouldn't! That's not what I'm worried about, man!" Lewis's voice drops. "I'm grateful for what you did, but you were taking a big chance, just to save me from a little embarrassment. If you'd been caught with your hand in a DI's pocket..." He shakes his head emphatically. "Not worth the risk."

James allows himself a small smile. "I promise to restrain myself, sir. Though it had occurred to me that it might be amusing if DI Broderick's warrant card went missing, only to be found in the first floor loo."

Lewis frowns. "First floor loo? Hang on, isn't that the Ladies?" In response to James's nod, he lets out a rumble of laughter. "I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm very glad that you're on our side." He rises from the bench, brushing crumbs from his trousers. "Time to go in for the second half. When this thing is over, what do you say we head out for a pint? I reckon I owe you one."

"Thanks." James falls into step beside his governor. Lewis is humming something that sounds vaguely familiar, though it's not one of his favourite 70's rock ballads, nor a football anthem. An advert jingle? It's got that sort of simplistic, annoying melody. He frowns, and suddenly the lyrics flood into his mind: _"You've got to pick a pocket or two..."_

 

\--- THE END ---

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This story was intended to be part of the Summer 2015 Challenge for the Inspector Lewis Fanworks Challenge comm on LJ. Unfortunately a major case of Real Life prevented me from finishing it on time and kept me away from writing for many months. Here it is, finally. I used kazoogirl1503's prompt: "Robbie told James once that he was glad James was on the side of the law. A story about how James broke the law at some point and kept it from Robbie would be great. It can either be humorous or serious. Go wild."


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